Slowing Down, Speeding Up

It’s obvious I’m not posting here with the frequency I once did. Food blogging is a lot of work, and I have to hand it to the people who do it consistently and well. I’m a bit more slow and methodical than most when it comes to producing content, so what might take them 30 minutes to throw online takes perfectionist me two hours.

I’ve decided to focus my efforts on venues that are more about writing (which I have a talent for) rather than photography (which I don’t). I just don’t think recipes are so much fun to read without a photo alongside, but photos are what keep holding me up with most recipe posts.

I’m still writing about food, though! Not only will I find time to still put up the occasional post here, but I’m now posting to a new blog that has a broader focus. Pennies & Pounds focuses on nutritious eating, losing weight for better health, and managing a kitchen to minimize waste and stress while maintaining a budget. I’d love for anyone reading this to come check out my new articles there. As a bonus, I’ll even gradually be bringing over updated and otherwise revised versions of some of the more popular articles from this site. You’ll feel right at home.

Incidentally, if you happen to be an educator or parent reading this, I’d like to give a shout-out to the other web site project I run, Sharp Pencils. It’s an evolving site focused on encouraging kids to write and aiding their language-arts teachers.

Back to food . . . here’s links to a few of the latest posts over at my new site, Pennies & Pounds:

A Jackpot within Reach

I tried and tried. Oh, did I try!

I bought nothing but light mayonnaise, skim cottage cheese, low-fat this, reduced-calorie that. I stocked my car with 100-calorie snack packs to ward off post-work hunger. I switched to healthier, whole-wheat pasta and bread. I bought diet books and tried to follow my magazines’ eating plans. I even joined a gym!

It didn’t matter. My weight, which had been inching upwards all through college, shot up dramatically. I gained more than 20 pounds in less than two years!

Articles of Independence (Day)!

I’m polishing up the first couple of posts for the site still. Look for more soon on weigh-ins and fruity deliciousness! In the mean time, check out this week’s articles of interest:

New York Times – The Claim: Mayonnaise Can Increase Risk of Food Poisoning
I’m glad to see they’ve finally taken on this old saw, and just in time for July 4th picnics. I discovered mayo had been given a bad rap years ago on the wonderful Good Eats.

Fruitful Snacking

Afternoon rolls around, and lunch seems like it was an eternity ago. Stomach rumbling, you reach for a snack to quell your hunger. But what should you choose?

Pick fruit! It’s an easy, pleasurable, and nutritious way to aid your efforts to improve your health and lose weight.

Unlike most “snack foods,” fruit is good for you! It offers vitamins, antioxidants, fiber and other nutrients, in a tidy, plant-based package. That bit’s important: After all, we need more plant-based foods in our diets for not only health but environmental and budgetary reasons.

Weighty Matters

I’ve long had a minor obsession with weights and measures. As a kid, I loved fussing with the balances in science class. I also found the those manual scales in the doctor’s office fascinating. In fact, I thrilled inside when I finally got to take one for a spin at the gym years later. In the kitchen, I’ve fallen for the digital food scale. I weigh portions to match nutrition labels when I’m counting calories, and I park my work bowl on the thing for measuring ingredients when I’m baking — it saves on dishes!

It’s in the bathroom, though, that I have tucked away the most important scale in the house. Every morning, I step on it to see how I’m doing at losing or maintaining my weight. Why? A firm grasp of where the scale points is one of the best tools in your weight-loss arsenal. To keep that toolbox stocked, you must weigh yourself regularly.

More are coming soon! But you’ll have to visit the new site to see those. Hope to see you there!

Slips!

I’ve definitely been stalled for the past few weeks, weight-loss wise. It’s not a surprise to run into a plateau, sure, but it is depressing. Oh, and my desire to eat has long been connected to my levels of stress and depression. It’s a vicious cycle.

I need to get out and about more for exercise to reduce the stress and depression, but I have little desire to go outside in the freezing weather. I’m none too keen on exercising with my videos, though, because it’s tough to move around and still seen what’s on my 13-inch laptop LCD. Well, and also because I feel like the time investment is too high when I have to add in the extra changing of clothes (ooh, and that irritates my sore shoulder, struggling to get on the tight support tops!), the setup, and the additional showering.

This kind of not seeing the forest for the trees is a problem with my food choices, too. It’s only upon long reflection that this root of a lot of my diet issues from the Vegas years dawned on me, and the past few days have shown that I still engage in this irrational behavior.

For example, I’ll start out the day great, choosing healthy breakfast and lunch foods. I’ll stick to low-cal but high-protein or high-fiber snacks if I need them in the afternoon. Dinners sometimes end up a little indulgent, but I plan them in advance to make sure the higher-cal item is more than balanced by an abundance of vegetables to fill out the plate. (I do subscribe to the notion that the plate should be 1/4 lean protein, 1/4 carb or starch, and 1/2 veggies.) But then comes the looooooong stretch between dinner and bed.

Many days I’m OK with nothing after dinner or with a small dessert like a 1/2 cup of ice cream or a couple of chocolates. Lately, however, I’ve had difficulty due to the emotional eating. I get all anxious and both want to eat to ease it and to not eat because I will get more anxious from the knowledge I’m destroying my diet for the day, you know?

Anyway, I force myself not to eat any of the healthy snacks for a while because I want to avoid calories, then totally crash and indulge in unhealthy foods to shut up the “I want to eat!” voice.

I did this all the time in Vegas. I spent a lot of time and money on finding and buying healthy foods, only to ruin it all by talking myself into believing I deserved the indulgence of a big fast-food meal and snack chips after a long, tiring, stressful work day.

I need help, honestly.

In other news, I have been looking over this list of healthy foods. It’s nice to see some of my favorite foods (white potatoes, romaine lettuce, onions, etc.) on there when I had figured they had little nutritional value. And I do cook the potatoes in healthy ways these days — usually steamed with ketchup for dipping or mashed with low-fat cheese and skim milk.

Steamed Potatoes

4 small russet potatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper

Toss everything in one of those big Ziploc steamer bags. Microwave for 14 minutes.

Alternatively, cook ‘em in a bowl loosely covered with plastic wrap. And the measures are totally approximate. I do it differently each time.

I love these with ketchup. It’s low in calories and the combo reminds me of fries without making me crave fries. However, if you’re feeling particularly Slovak, they’re also great with tartar sauce.

Progress in Healthy Eating

I’m starting to emerge from weeks of sleep problems and feel a little more like writing now. I thought I’d reflect a bit on the effects I’m seeing from my switch to paying greater attention to what I eat.

Mentally, I think I’ve come a long way in how I view food. I feel better equipped now to make good decisions about food from all these months of educating myself on nutrition, portion sizes, and calorie counts. I can face the dinner table and choose not to have an extra slice (or two) of buttered bread because I know that with one slice I’ve eaten a serving sufficient for my body.

I’m hoping that this will translate into success in beating off temptations when I’m back in the United States and have access to my favorite junk foods. There’s not much selection in chips here, for example, and I generally dislike the ones that are here. Back home, I will have to face aisles bursting with Fritos, flavored pretzel nuggets, and Sun Chips. I’m hoping my ability to resist picking up a bag or two at the store now is not simply due to the chips being subpar.

I do think I will be better able to resist fast food. I ate a ton of fast-food dinners while I was working alone in Vegas, partly because of stress and fatigue and partly because I didn’t feel motivated to cook when the audience was just myself. I will have Scott around full time when we get back, so his appreciation of my efforts will be encouraging for me in the kitchen (not that we take the attitude that cooking is “women’s work” — I just prefer to cook and he prefers to take on other home tasks I hate, such as washing dishes). But more than that, I feel like I have learned the error of my ways and understand that all that bad food was holding me back from achieving a healthy weight in a way that I didn’t before.

You see, before the last few months, I basically ate whatever whenever. I ate what I could get quickly when I was starving, and I ate when I felt stressed. I thought about eating healthy foods, but while I did switch to eating whole grains and tried incorporating more vegetables, I generally sabotaged those efforts by frequent trips through the drive-thru and down the snack aisles. I figured I’d chosen healthy foods at other times so I could “afford” to slack off. Unfortunately, I used that excuse multiple times per week, and no one can afford to slack off so much.

So my mindset has changed. It’ll certainly be tested when I get home and have to face more choices and the stress of more work, but here’s hoping.

I’ve also noticed lately that my digestive system is a lot happier than it used to be. I used to pop a lot of Tums and have uncomfortable, leaden sensations in my stomach. I also had other unpleasant digestive symptoms I’d rather not discuss. But now, my stomach and the rest of my guts never really bother me. True, they did somewhat on our cruises this year, but now I know why — it was all from overeating, especially overeating foods high in fat.

I don’t oppose fat in food, by the way. Unsaturated fats such as olive oil are necessary for good health.  I do try to cut a lot of fat from diet, though, both because I was definitely eating too much before and because it’s the easiest source of calories to remove. As long as you have a good nonstick pan, you can cut out a tablespoon or two of oil or butter from nearly every recipe, and that’s a huge calorie savings.

The one area I haven’t done so well in is keeping my blood sugar on an even keel throughout the day. I’m not a diabetic or anything like that, thank goodness, but from what I’ve read I know that certain foods can affect blood sugar levels even in healthy people. You know — eating simple carbs causes you to get a quick energy rush followed by a big crash. I still have times throughout the day when I suddenly turn all cranky and tired for no apparent reason and then feel much better after a meal.

Nevertheless, I think I’ve made a lot of progress, and I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished so far. I’ve managed to lose almost 20 pounds since the beginning of October on top of the changes I’ve wrought in my attitude towards food. I’m hoping all those changes are here to stay.